BACK in 2014, during the absurdly negative campaign of lies and scaremongering, Gordon Brown made a speech on pensions. He gave one of his typical tedious Stalinist set-pieces in front of an audience of vetted Labour party hacks. In it he extolled the virtues of “pooling and sharing” resources. He also questioned the “affordability” of the state pension under independence.

Now banker-friendly buffoon Boris Johnson is planning to raise the state pension to 75. This just shows how worthless Brown’s promise was.

It was Brown whose stealth tax on pensions in 1997 is estimated to have cost private pensions some £100 billion and set the scene for the debasement of pensions.

Brown and Blair emulated and celebrated the financialisation of the UK economy under Thatcher. Brown’s “light touch” regulation lead the banks to collapse. They had become nests of fraud-infested insider lootings.

The process of financialisation of the economy started under Thatcher. Her ideas were all stolen from Chilean dictator Pinochet. State assets were given away. This created massive windfalls for speculators and large financial institutions. Meanwhile the council house privatisation led to a huge giveaway to investment bankers.

This house of cards collapsed under the 2008 crash. It was Gordon Brown who lead the global charge to bail out the banks. This has lead to a decade of austerity under the Tories which the Office for Budget responsibility says will last 50 years.

The rise in the state pension age to 75 is only the latest stage of the 2008 crash.

Alan Hinnrichs
Dundee

I AM not in the least surprised at the Liberals’ current leader spurning any deal with Labour.

The expression “Liberal principles” is an oxymoron. I well remember their leader at that time, Nick Clegg , presenting a tablet – cast in stone – saying “No Tuition Fees”; this was cast aside when the Liberals went into coalition with the Tories. I think Ms Swinson became a junior minister.

Ms Swinson’s rejection of Jeremy Corbyn as a caretaker leader until Brexit gets knocked on the head is playing party politics; whatever one may think of Jeremy Corbyn, he is the democratically elected leader of the Labour party and thus Leader of the Opposition. One just wonders if Ms Swinson has taken her holier-than-thou stance because Mr Corbyn has stated he would not block a second Scottish independence referendum? Mr Corbyn was re-elected leader of Labour by a landslide.

Of course Ms Swinson is high on the fact that the Liberals won the Brecon by-election – worth remembering that they only won it by a little over 1400 votes – in a seat where Plaid Cymru, the Greens and Change UK stepped aside to give the Liberals a clear run; we also do not forget that the Tory candidate was the former MP, deselected because he cheated on his expenses.

Jim Lynch
Edinburgh

I UNDERSTAND that Jo Swinson now has the stated ambition to become Prime Minister. Has she forgotten that as the representative for the Scottish seat of East Dunbartonshire she is a second-class MP and is unable to vote on any matters deemed to be “England only”? The English electorate could not possibly tolerate a Prime Minister with the power to formulate bills in the likes of the NHS, education, agriculture, fisheries and forestry (for the meantime), environment, police and fire services, prisons, many aspects of transport (including rail franchising) and many other areas, while being unable to actually vote on any of these policies.

Perhaps Jo knows something that her East Dunbartonshire constituents don’t know yet. If there is a snap General Election is she planning on standing for a safe English seat?

Jim Wylie
Stewarton

I FAIL to understand the rationale behind the apparently widespread aversion to nationalisation of Scotrail. The fact of the matter is that it is already nationalised by the Dutch Government. Abellio, which now owns six UK rail franchises, is a subsidiary of the Dutch state rail operator, which obviously thinks it can make a profit from providing these businesses in order to subsidise services in the Netherlands, otherwise it would presumably stop bidding for them. What do they know that we don’t?

Cameron Crawford
Rothesay

WHAT is it with the SNP leadership? So their top priority is to seize control of the British Parliament to stop Brexit. Well I’m sorry, but your top priority in the British Parliament should be what the people of Scotland lent you their vote for – to protect the people from right-wing Tory governments and to gain independence, not to save the Brits from themselves.

I’ve always thought SNP MPs should only serve a max of two terms at Westminster, then return to Holyrood, thus stopping them getting too used to the gravy train that seems to distort their thinking of why they were sent there in the first place.

R Fullerton
via text

I’M right behind Tommy Sheppard and his request for the results of any polls that Wasteminster have secretly commissioned (Secret poll on indy must be made public, says Sheppard, August 17). To be honest Tommy will probably have more chance of getting the Trident launch codes!

I’m sure it will show that there is still a significant percentage of the people resident in Scotland who are unsure or don’t-knows. These are the demographic voter who the Unionists will target with Project Fear 2.0. It will probably work again.

Keep plugging away Tommy, I look forward to reading these gems, when they relinquish the redacted versions.

Sandy Allan
Ellon